Oh Crap, Syria Just Became a Three-Way War

On Sept. 12, Islamic rebels in Syria declared war … on their fellow rebels. Two Al Qaeda-linked extremist rebel groups—Al Nusrah and the Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham, a.k.a. ISIS—followed up their declaration with an attack on the main Free Syrian Army.

The two-year-old Syrian civil war is now officially a three-way fight, pitting the regime of Pres. Bashar Al Assad versus the FSA versus the Islamists.

In other words, an unholy mess.

On Sept. 18 extremist forces attacked the moderate rebels in Azaz, on the outskirts of Aleppo in northern Syria. Details on the fighting have been provided by the Syrian Support Group, a U.S.-based organization that is certified by the State Department to provide non-lethal aid to the FSA.

“The firefight began when ISIS tried to kidnap a German doctor working in an Azaz hospital with Doctors Without Borders,” the Syrian Support Group reported. “Fighters protecting the doctor refused to allow him to be taken. ISIS then began shooting, and the fighting spread throughout the town in short measure.”